Alden, Ilad
It isn't a proper time to call at all when Alden makes his way to Ilad's door, long past supper and settling into proper evening, but it's before even early birds usually find themselves in bed. His jaw has long since been shaved, hair trimmed neat but left slightly long, and clothes remain unwrinkled to match despite the subtle scent of smoke and alcohol that clings to the weave of fabric. When he lifts a hand to knock, his knuckles only rap gently on the door.
It takes Ilad some time to answer the door, for all that he is no longer walking with aid of a stick -- whether he /should/ be using the stick or not is another matter; as a patient he worsens with time rather than improves. When he reaches it, he opens the door and leans slightly against it, hand braced against its knob, and looks to Alden with an expression that, first neutral and bland, shades resigned. By way of greeting, he says, "Ah."
"I doubt you're surprised," Alden replies slowly, his own greeting leaving much to be desired with a dry drawl over the words. They slur only slightly, British accent thickened deeply. He studies Ilad, a question written in his own expression as he searches for the answer in the other man.
"No," Ilad says. There is a tightness in the single syllable, the faint hint of a frustrated rasp on his breath. He looks tense, and there are the vestiges of pain in his expression belike from his stubborn limping back and forth across the apartment. He hesitates for a long moment's quiet and then pushes the door open. "I should invite you in," he says, without much inflection to be read in the words, and he turns to move back across the room towards the white-blond chair at which he sat, writing, before Alden came to jar him from his thoughts.
Alden watches Ilad move away before he steps inside the apartment himself, murmuring an agreeable, "Yes, thank you." His fingers find his pockets, the tips sliding into jeans as he shadows Ilad into the living room. "I offered to help, but if you do not really want it, Ilad--."
Ilad does not say anything until he reaches the table and folds his pen carefully inside the notebook, closing it and flattening it under the pressure of his hand. Standing there, he is still a moment. "I have not sought you out not because I do not wish your aid," he says, without looking up. "I don't know what to say to you, Alden."
"You don't know what to say to me?" Alden repeats, only the slightest inflection of confusion as grey eyes drag over Ilad, brows drawing together slightly.
It takes Ilad a little too long to respond to this, and it is though the tension writes its way slowly up his spine. His head bowing slightly as though under a great weight, he says quietly: "I will speak plain. It is difficult for me to do so, but to do less is unworthy of me." He draws a long breath through his nose, holds it for a heartbeat, and then says, "You spoke of this. Of us, of me. Three can keep a secret, they say, if one of them is dead. All three live. Or however many more you spoke to, I do not know. I do not believe I wish to know."
As the words dawn over Alden, he swallows slowly, his jaw tensing in the moment as he continues to watch Ilad with a narrowness of focus. "You're angry because I spoke to Adam about you," he clarifies briefly, his hand sliding from his pocket to curve uselessly into a fist. "And it was only Adam, so you do know."
Ilad turns away from the table, his knuckles bracing against the back of the white-blond chair he so frequently uses, and he turn to look at Alden with a steady kind of intensity in his expression. "You truly," he begins, and stops, swallowing with the slight shake of his head. "You truly have no idea. Do you."
"I only told someone I trusted, Ilad. Someone I knew who wouldn't--." Alden steps forward at that intensity, something pleading about his words as he replies lowly, "I don't, but I am sorry. I didn't tell him to hurt you." Reaching hesitantly for Ilad, his fingers are slow as they move to brush over his forearm.
Ilad wrenches his arm away as though the simple human contact, ordinarily as welcome as sunlight, causes him physical pain. He stands there a moment, and a quiver ripples over the long, taut lines of his body. He says, very quietly, with a tremor in his low voice as he speaks to match the one that shook his frame, "It was something like twenty years, Alden, and I spoke to /no one/. The secret escaped me only to those who /robbed/ me of it."
Tension tight over Alden's lips, his teeth clench for a moment before he says slowly, carefully, "I did not mean to rob you of your secret and treat it carelessly." His fingers splay briefly empty against the air before they're withdrawn to slide back into his pocket firmly, stepping back slightly.
"You have no conception," Ilad says, watching Alden's face with dark eyes lit bright with a kind of high aggravation, "of what it took for me to try--" Voice raw with something like shame, he clears his throat to grapple at his composure, and breathes out a low laugh that has little to do with humor as he looks away. "What I tried. With you."
"No, I don't think I do, but I try, Ilad. I've always been shameless about what I want and what I am." Frustration twists Alden's lips briefly, something like a plea on his words as he replies in a murmur, "If I had known, I wouldn't have done anything to make it harder."
"Shameless, are you?" Ilad snarls the words in a sharp breath. He strides forward, heedless of the pain rippling from the strained and healing muscle of his thigh, and his hand flies to a curve that braces at the back of Alden's neck. "Did I give you the impression it was something I undertook lightly?" he asks. "Did you come upon the mistaken idea that it was /not/ a secret I held close? That I was willing to /share it around/?"
Alden's own fingers lift to capture at Ilad's wrist lightly, the tremor of tension along the contact between them communicating fear and worry more effectively than his expression does as he watches the man. "I told the only friend I had remaining at the time. I wouldn't have shared your secret if it weren't something that--. I'm sorry, Ilad," he repeats softly, grey eyes seeking dark with the start of a frown.
Tense and taut and still, Ilad stands there for a moment's silence that bespeaks a struggle for self-control. "It is not as though I believed you acted with malice," he says. His thumb strokes down the column of Alden's throat, a glide of fierce heat where his hand remains a strong brace at the back of his neck, like a combined caress and assertion of control. "Thoughtless, my friend, careless of my trust. Where am I, with you? Where do I stand?"
"You're my friend. A man that I can trust with anything," Alden answers, swallowing against the touch as he leans towards the warmth of Ilad's presence. "{I can't lose you.}" The last comes in a whisper of Arabic, a thought slipping into words as fingers dig slightly into the man's wrist.
"If those things are so," Ilad answers, his voice rough and dark without any trace of the humor that ordinarily lurks in the edges of his English, "then I believe I am owed something from you. Am I not?" His pulse hammers, heightened and detectable under the press of Alden's grip at his wrist. His stillness is almost complete, now, and the intensity in his dark eyes carries the force of all his stubborn will.
Alden's movements seem slow beside that lack, his lips lowered to brush over Ilad's with the slightest hint of uncertainty in the lightness of the gesture. Again, he offers in Hebrew, "{I'm sorry.}"
Ilad's hand tightens in its grip, the pressure of his fingers like a warning in the tender skin. The kiss is perforce brief, a chaste brush of mouth to mouth before Ilad turns his head away, a long breath hissed past his nose. He swallows, hard, says, "What's done is done. You cannot undo it. It is maddening how little you understand, but it seems there is nothing to be done about that either." He releases Alden's neck and yanks his hand away, stepping back and doing his best to ignore the fire of pain that eats up his wounded limb at the shift of pressure. Wincing, he says, "Do not /toy/ with me."
Frustration flickers brief in Alden's expression as he tries to lengthen that kiss without any luck. His features are smoothed into a flatness as Ilad pulls away that does little better to hide his feelings when he asks briefly, "Would you like me to fix that, then?" His own fingers flick towards the leg in a sharp gesture.
"Alden," Ilad says with a strain buried in the paired syllables of his friend's name. He shakes his head again, looking back at him with answering frustration. "Now you try to kiss me? /Now/?"
"Is it any surprise to you that I'd kiss you at the most inopportune times?" Alden asks with a dry humor that does little to light grey eyes, his gaze meeting Ilad's for a moment before it slides away. His fingers twist through hair as he falls silent, raking it away from his face before he adds, "It shouldn't be. I've always wanted you, you know that."
"And yet," Ilad says, looking at him taut-mouthed and on the borders of anger. "Need I remind you that /you/ chose."
Fingers curving slightly, they still in his hair as Alden's gaze flickers back to Ilad. After a moment, he answers briefly, simply, "I know. What's done is done." His lips press together, hand falling to his side with an escaped breath before he shakes his head sharply. "Did you want my help, Ilad? I offered, after all."
Ilad studies him for a moment, and annoyance lances across his features in a flash. "Yes," he says. "Yes, I did. I do." His eyes close, and then open again, frustration rife in tone and expression. "Adam would have me believe," he says with a kind of careful precision of his words, cutting through the thickness of his accent, "that he is responsible for your choice. That if he had not spoken you might not have chosen cowardice when I came to you at the human limit of my courage."
"Sit down, then. And remove your pants," Alden orders firmly, his tone sharply professional as he watches Ilad for a moment before turning to retreat to the bathroom. "Who knows what I would have chosen."
For this, Ilad gives Alden a particularly sardonic look. He stands silent for a long moment afterward, and proves himself a terrible patient by following neither instruction. Rather, he grips the back of the chair and turns his glare on the dark outside the room, jaw tensed and eyes dark.
The soft sounds of cabinets opening sounds from the bathroom as Alden gathers up the basics, one long silence between one moment and the next before he calls out to the living room with a brief, "Do you have scissors?" He continues searching even as he asks.
"Medkit," Ilad answers factually. "Or sewing kit. Second drawer." He limps over to his sofa and strips off his pants in sharp jerks, leaving dark boxer briefs in place and sitting down -- or crumpling down; somewhere between the two, anyway.
When Alden returns, it's with the found medkit in his hands, a wet washcloth gripped underneath it as he pauses for a moment to study Ilad against the sofa, grey eyes sliding over the expanse of skin and pausing at the ragged evidence of violence. When he moves forward, he breaks the silence by asking, "Would you rather remove the stitches yourself, or would you like me to?"
There are old scars to mingle with these sutures: an ancient bullet wound on the self-same leg, nearly high enough to threaten considerably more intimate territory; and on the other one, not quite positioned as a mirror image, but imperfectly so. His body bears scars all over, though his arms stay clear. Ilad snaps his fingers a couple of times, impatience reflected in the gesture. "Either," he says, "so long as we do it quickly."
Expression shuttering into mild patience, Alden finds his own place on the couch as he lays out the necessary supplies, doing what he can to disinfect them. Seated as well, when he does move to start removing the stitches, he leans slightly over Ilad to get to the wound, his fingers resting gently on either side of the bullet hole as he first snips the threads and then removes them slowly, remaining tensely silent.
Ilad is likewise tensely silent, but his stillness as Alden works is almost perfect. His hands closed into fists, he sits there, and measures his breathing, and does not quite look at him.
Pressing the damp cloth to the wound as Alden holds it closed, he finally lifts his head to try to seek out dark eyes now that his leg no longer needs his attention. "This will hurt," he warns as he shifts closer, positioning himself less awkwardly as he waits for a brief moment before the familiar ebb of energy eats at him. The pain that mirrors the healing process in a skewed image radiates from the wound as the tissue pulls itself together.
Ilad's body quakes under the pain despite the best efforts of his self-control. To the limits of his stubborn power, he forces himself not to cry out. Since the wound is partly healed already, and since this is a man whose ridiculous levels of intransigent pride and iron control kept him from outright screaming during unanaesthetized ass surgery, perhaps this is not entirely unexpected.
"I'm sorry, love," Alden murmurs at Ilad's side, his thumb dragging against the man's thigh in an apologetic caress as the pain continues for a brief minute more. Partly healed, it doesn't last as long, but either he doesn't notice for a moment or isn't inclined to pull away as soon as it's over.
Ilad is still for a moment longer, and then he reaches with one hand to take Alden's. Sitting there without pants on, with the scar new and old and ugly on his flesh, he twists Alden's hand tightly in his own. After a beat's silence, he lifts it, and ducks his head to brush the warmth of a kiss, shaken and trembling, against the inside of Alden's wrist. His voice harsh and rough, he says, "Pain means that you are alive. That I am alive."
Pulse racing under Ilad's lips, Alden starts to murmur something agreeable, the words choked off before they begin to instead change to a pleading, "Ilad, if I could change that choice--. I wanted to avoid that pain, but I want you more." Blond lashes fan over his gaze, lowered with a tight anticipation to watch the man, to memorize the picture of his lips. "It shouldn't all be just pain until we die."
"And when you change your mind again," Ilad growls, though with his mouth still warm and close against Alden's skin as he looks up at him, eyes dark and irritated. "When I am cruel, or you are frightened again, when you don't have a nastier fear at your back than at your front? What then?"
"We are both gambling, aren't we?" Alden returns, desire darkening his own gaze as his blood hammers against his wrist. "But I want you, and that's never changed and won't change, love." His free hand lifts to brush against Ilad's cheek, trailing fingers into the fine hair above his temple. "And I need you."
"Hah," Ilad says without humor. He lifts his other hand to deliver a light slap at Alden's cheek -- well, something between slap and pat. "The risk versus the reward looks very foolish in my accounting book." Then he shifts, turning away, releasing Alden's hand and withdrawing from his face to pick up his pants from the floor.
Remaining tightly still on the couch, Alden affords Ilad his privacy by not watching him, kept turned away as he folds his hands into his lap and stares at them for the moment instead. His own fingers curl over each other tightly. "Of course," he says briefly, slipping into a comfortable dryness.
Once his trousers are fastened, Ilad is safely standing. He turns back, testing his leg with a brief and visible wondering in his expression for its haleness. He holds out his hand toward Alden, palm up. Voice soft, he says, "Come."
At the gesture, Alden curves his brow up slightly, pushing to his feet in one graceful movement without the assistance. "It will be tight for a while. You may want to still go easy on it," he replies instead, nodding towards Ilad's leg with a slight flicker of a smile.
Ilad dismisses medical advice with the flick of his fingers, and then reaches to take Alden's hand in his, pulling him in with a little tug as he looks, quiet and thoughtful, into his face.
Frustration seeps subtly through the neutral mask of Alden's expression, in the tightness of his hand in Ilad's though he doesn't fight against it. "Yes?" is questioned lightly, the word more pleasantly neutral than his body language.
Ilad tugs him in more insistently, and reaches with his other hand to frame Alden's face in the curve of his hand. Rocking forward on the balls of his feet to further erase the distance between their bodies, he murmurs, "You may make a fool of me yet," a bare centimeter from Alden's mouth before he tips his head to claim a kiss.
Frustration doesn't disappear so much as break into something else, into the demand with which Alden's meets the kiss, rough as he curls fingers through Ilad's hair tightly. He presses tightly to the man's lean muscle, seeking his warmth out greedily with a keen urgency. "I won't," he promises roughly, briefly.
Ilad loses a sound buried in the kiss, something between a laugh and sigh and maybe something else. He does not release Alden's hand, in the close press of his fingers, and his hand at his cheek slides into a curve at the back of his head, holding him in the pressure of a fervent kiss whose greed fades to something softer over passing seconds. Ilad breaks it to tip his head, pressing their foreheads together with a mingling of their breath. "If I ask you to let me alone awhile," he says, "will it hurt you, my friend?"
"I want to step forward, not back," is not quite an answer, Alden's words kept soft as his own free fingers stroke gently against Ilad's hair, eyes sliding closed to splay blond lashes over his cheeks as he falls patiently silent, waiting.
Ilad presses another kiss, this to the corner of Alden's mouth, and then ducks his head away, breath coming in a low puff past his nose.
Hand slipping away to catch at Ilad's hip instead, as if to hold the man close, Alden replies lowly, "If you ask it, I'll do it." Despite his words, his thumb brushes against the skin above the waistband of his jeans, dragging over hot flesh briefly.
Ilad murmurs, "I need a little time to -- think. I only ask that you do not take it as--" He catches Alden's forearm and draws fingertips over it, sliding down to claim his hand and pull it up and away from his pants. He shifts back just slightly, folding Alden's hand in both of his. "You know."
"I won't," Alden says with a soft exhale of breath, a small pulls of his lips forming a crooked smile as his gaze lowers to their hands.
Ilad lifts Alden's hand in the press of both his and brushes his lips against his knuckles before letting go and taking another step back. He lifts his hands, palm up, and his eyebrows dart up.
Only one of Alden's brows curves upward, smile lingering as he offers a warm, "Gnight, Ilad. Sleep well." He takes a step back as well, his hands falling to his sides before slipping into his pockets.
"{Good night,}" Ilad answers, Hebrew soft and warm and a little wry.
There's a slight study made, lingering for a moment, of Ilad before Alden turns to go, but he does without another word, seeing himself from the apartment.
Ilad stands quiet behind him, watching him go, and he does not move again until the door has closed behind him.
Apologies in multiple languages.